An interpretation of the vampire story that celebrates issues of race and sexuality but loses power to its inadequate...
This 25th anniversary edition relaunches Gomez's (Don't Explain, 1998, etc.) novel about an assumption-shattering woman who happens to be black, lesbian, and a vampire.
When a young black girl escapes from a life of slavery in 1850s Louisiana, she takes refuge in a brothel run by two mysterious women who educate her, become her family, and eventually introduce her to the world of vampirism and eternal life. The novel follows Gilda’s experiences as she wrestles with the responsibilities of supernatural power and the challenges of unending life, swooping in on key episodes that each take place in a different time and city. Gilda meets other vampires in the salons of early San Francisco, becomes a beautician in 1950s Boston, works in off-Broadway theater in 1971, and eventually leaps ahead of us in time to a bleak future of economic and environmental collapse. These historic vignettes delight in and take energy from their settings, reveling in period details and costuming. They also place issues of blackness, sexuality, and female empowerment in different times, giving Gilda’s story the heft of historical context to play its themes against. The earnest conviction of the novel and its desire to create a black lesbian heroine whose strength and choices redefine assumptions about the vampire myth lend it a certain momentum, but the story falters under the strain of unclear and often graceless writing. Point of view shifts unexpectedly and without clear narrative motive, cutting the reader adrift from the flow of the story and making the characters awkwardly transparent. While the novel presents a compelling imagining of vampirism as a meaningful and spiritual exchange, certain elements of simple exposition, like the rules that govern a vampire’s existence, remain jumbled and confusing.
An interpretation of the vampire story that celebrates issues of race and sexuality but loses power to its inadequate writing.Pub Date: April 15, 2016
ISBN: 978-0-87286-674-4
Page Count: 288
Publisher: City Lights
Review Posted Online: Feb. 3, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2016
An author to watch, Buehlman is now two for two in delivering eerie, offbeat novels with admirable literary skill.
Cormac McCarthy's The Road meets Chaucer's Canterbury Tales in this frightful medieval epic about an orphan girl with visionary powers in plague-devastated France.
The year is 1348. The conflict between France and England is nothing compared to the all-out war building between good angels and fallen ones for control of heaven (though a scene in which soldiers are massacred by a rainbow of arrows is pretty horrific). Among mortals, only the girl, Delphine, knows of the cataclysm to come. Angels speak to her, issuing warnings—and a command to run. A pack of thieves is about to carry her off and rape her when she is saved by a disgraced knight, Thomas, with whom she teams on a march across the parched landscape. Survivors desperate for food have made donkey a delicacy and don't mind eating human flesh. The few healthy people left lock themselves in, not wanting to risk contact with strangers, no matter how dire the strangers' needs. To venture out at night is suicidal: Horrific forces swirl about, ravaging living forms. Lethal black clouds, tentacled water creatures and assorted monsters are comfortable in the daylight hours as well. The knight and a third fellow journeyer, a priest, have difficulty believing Delphine's visions are real, but with oblivion lurking in every shadow, they don't have any choice but to trust her. The question becomes, can she trust herself? Buehlman, who drew upon his love of Fitzgerald and Hemingway in his acclaimed Southern horror novel, Those Across the River (2011), slips effortlessly into a different kind of literary sensibility, one that doesn't scrimp on earthy humor and lyrical writing in the face of unspeakable horrors. The power of suggestion is the author's strong suit, along with first-rate storytelling talent.
An author to watch, Buehlman is now two for two in delivering eerie, offbeat novels with admirable literary skill.Pub Date: Oct. 2, 2012
ISBN: 978-1-937007-86-7
Page Count: 432
Publisher: Ace/Berkley
Review Posted Online: Sept. 1, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2012
At Buckkeep in the Six Duchies, young Fitz, the bastard son of Prince Chivalry, is raised as a stablehand by old warrior Burrich. But when Chivalry dies without legitimate issue—murdered, it's rumored—Fitz, at the orders of King Shrewd, is brought into the palace and trained in the knightly and courtly arts. Meanwhile, secretly at night, he receives instruction from another bastard, Chade, in the assassin's craft. Now, King Shrewd's subjects are imperiled by the visits of the Red-Ship Raiders—formidable warriors who pillage the seacoasts and turn their human victims into vicious, destructive zombies. Since rehabilitating the zombies proves impossible, it's Fitz's task to go abroad covertly and kill them as quickly and humanely as possible. Shrewd orders that Fitz be taught the Skill—mental powers of telepathy and coercion possessed by all those of the royal line; his teacher is Galen, a sadistic ally of the popinjay Prince Regal, who hates Fitz all the more for his loyalty to Shrewd's other son, the stalwart soldier Verity. Galen brutalizes Fitz and, unknown to anyone, implants a mental block that prevents Fitz from using the Skill. Later, Shrewd decrees that, to cement an alliance, Verity shall wed the Princess Kettricken, heir to a remote yet rich mountain kingdom. Verity, occupied with Skillfully keeping the Red-Ship Raiders at bay, can't go to collect his bride, so Regal and Fitz are sent. Finally, Fitz must discover the depths of Regal's perfidy, recapture his true Skill, win Kettricken's heart for Verity, and help Verity defeat the Raiders. An intriguing, controlled, and remarkably assured debut, at once satisfyingly self-contained yet leaving plenty of scope for future extensions and embellishments.
Pub Date: April 17, 1995
ISBN: 0-553-37445-1
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Spectra/Bantam
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 1995
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